KARACHI, Sept 19: SP Mohammad Aslam Khan — better known as Chaudary Aslam — is a household name for those who are aware of the city police one way or another.

With 27 years of service in Karachi police, SP Khan is a symbol of success for many and for others of hatred.

Since the 1990s 'Karachi Operation' to the killing of Abdul Rahman Baloch, alias Rahman Dakait, in an alleged encounter in 2009, he is recognised for many reasons by police authorities, the media and political parties.

Described by city police chief Saud Mirza as one of the most 'threatened officers' working in the city for his recent 'success' in the arrest of 'banned outfit members', SP Khan is currently having a charge of an SSP-rank officer to look after the Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the Sindh police.

Though his recent raids against suspected militants were said to be a cause of the deadly attack on his house (as the blast responsibility was claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan), SP Khan has earlier survived a gun attack on his vehicle in the Gizri area in 2005. He has a history of paying the price for his ambitious, sometimes suspicious, professional career that began in 1984 when he joined the police force as an assistant sub-inspector.

For the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and those aware of the city's bloody political history, he is better known as the Gulbahar station house officer in the mid-1990s. SP Khan was one of the several officers serving the police in the 1990s when political activists — almost all associated with the then Mohajir Qaumi Movement — were killed in police encounters that were later documented as 'extra-judicial killings' and still described by the party as 'state-terrorism'.

The brutal trend, with the then interior minister Naseerullah Babar as its official in charge, led to end of the second elected Benazir Bhutto-led government of the Pakistan People's Party. Extrajudicial killings in Karachi and corruption scandals were cited as major reasons by the then President Farooq Khan Leghari for dissolving the assemblies.

Most of the officers associated with the Karachi Operation have been assassinated one by one over the last nine years.

However, Chaudary Aslam was promoted as deputy superintendent of police in 1998 and his work earned him the rank of superintendent of police in 2005.

The SP was put behind bars for staging an encounter to kill notorious dacoit Mashooq Brohi as chief of the Lyari Task Force (LTF) in July 2006. SP Khan and his colleagues spent 16 months in prison before being released in December 2007 on bail granted by the Sindh High Court.

The 2006 memories of the Brohi case were not over when SP Khan came under the spotlight again in 2009 for no different reason. As an SP for Investigation East II, Mr Khan with his team killed the alleged Lyari gangster Abdur Rahman Baloch, alias Rahman Dakait, and his three associates in an alleged encounter. SP Khan and his team made the headlines after the high court admitted a petition filed by Rahman Dakait's widow who challenged the 'police encounter' and submitted that her husband died in an extrajudicial killing.

The attack on his house left over half a dozen people dead in the DHA neighbourhood but it failed to dent SP's confidence and morale.

Still 47, as documented in the official record, SP Khan seems as calm as on any other day.

“My name is Chaudary Aslam,” said the undeterred SP facing TV cameras just minutes after the attack.

“They (militants) will regret, I tell you. Now what I will do with them, their generations will remember.”